Your own Dynamic DNS Service in GCP

Intro

This is inspired by a post here. I got tired of domain name expiration emails from no-ip.com and decided to spin-up my own service for good.

Instead of running a server constantly though, I've decided to go with managed DNS service from Google and manage record entries using a custom service running in Cloud Run. Such a serverless solution should be cheaper than running your own machine.

Structure

• infra - infrastructure as code for the project using Pulumi
• service - Node.js express web service which uses GCP Api's to manage DNS records

Want your own dynamic DNS?

1. Note that spinning up your own Dynamic DNS incurs payment to Google Cloud Platform. Though it should be negligible (e.g. around ~0.5 USD a month) - check pricing on GCP.

2. To understand what kind of resources are going to be created on GCP, have a look at ./infra/index.ts.

3. Login to GCP and create a project. Remember your project id as you will need it later.

4. Create Cloud DNS zone. Remember your zone id as you will need it later.

5. If you have Docker installed and familiar with it, you can use bash shell aliases below in your .zshrc or .bashrc files. Otherwise, install Pulimi CLI and GCloud as documented: pulumi and gcloud.

gcloud() {
  CMD="gcloud $@"
  docker run --rm \
         --network host \
         -v $HOME/docker-gcloud:/opt/home \
         -v $(pwd):/opt/cwd \
         -e HOME=/opt/home \
         --workdir /opt/cwd \
         -ti google/cloud-sdk $CMD
}

pulumi() {
  CMD="pulumi $@"
  docker run --rm --network host \
         -v $HOME/docker-gcloud:/opt/home \
         -v $(pwd):/opt/cwd \
         -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
         -e HOME=/opt/home \
         -e PULUMI_ACCESS_TOKEN \
         -w /opt/cwd/${PULUMI_ROOT} \
         --entrypoint bash \
         -ti pulumi/pulumi -c $CMD
}

1. Login to GCloud

2. Run following commands to login to Pulumi, create your stack and spin-up everything:

mkdir gcp-ddns && cd gcp-ddns
pulumi new https://github.com/zaripych/dynamic-cloud-dns/infra -s prod
pulumi up

1. Now, if everything is successfull, your Dynamic DNS can be updated using Cloud Run function. Run pulumi stack output directUrl -s prod to know the URL you should use to access your service.

2. Test if your service works by running:

curl $URL/version
curl $URL/update?secret=$SECRET&domain=$DOMAIN&ip=$IP